


Beads

by Sed



Category: Tron (Movies), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Implied Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-20
Updated: 2012-05-20
Packaged: 2017-11-05 17:37:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sed/pseuds/Sed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clu wants to know why Flynn wears a string of beads around his wrist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beads

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Windgirlcurse's](http://windgirlcurse.tumblr.com/) prompt.

Five.  
  
Six.  
  
Seven.  
  
Clu watched as Flynn slid his fingers over each bead, carefully repeating the motion in just the same way each time, as though he had been programmed to do so. Of course, he wasn’t programmed at all, which just made the exactness of his actions that much more puzzling.  
  
He had watched the user for cycles; sometimes he would remain for a milicycle or two, sometimes longer, often exiting and re-entering the little cell when the monotony became too much for his naturally overactive processors to tolerate. He needed stimulation; the games, or a bout with Rinzler. Watching Flynn drag beads over his broken hands was like standing alone in an empty Grid. Beyond boring—almost torture.  
  
And Clu knew torture. He’d found it, in the back of his inherited memories. Things Flynn had seen and learned when he was in his own world, things that made him sick, and at first they had affected Clu much the same way. Only he couldn’t become ill. Another concept he had learned over countless cycles, working Flynn’s body until his fragile shell relinquished a state of awareness that he knew to be consciousness. It was how they rebooted, overloaded, shut down… something like that.

Clu wasn’t even sure where Flynn had found the beads, if he hadn’t had them all along. He couldn’t recall seeing them on the user’s stripped body when they dragged him in, feet scraping across the pristine floor, head lolling to one side. His body was bruised and broken already, and Clu hadn’t even touched him yet. He allowed his creator time to heal, for his own system to knit itself, and then he started the real pain.  
  
The beads came some time later, along with the meditation. Clu assumed it was some method of keeping himself functioning properly, perhaps not physically, but mentally. Indeed, he seemed better able to endure the punishment inflicted upon his digital shell once he started the routine. At first it enraged Clu, and he ripped so many sets of beads from the man’s wrist that he could have filled the arena with them twice over. Each time they reappeared, and Flynn would return to his pained, repetitive mumbling. As Clu’s rage grew, so too did Flynn’s defiance, until one day he simply stopped speaking altogether. Nothing escaped his lips but the low sound of words Clu couldn’t understand, even when he strained to listen.  
  
So he found himself, yet again, standing before the man whose likeness was now so much different from his own, yet unmistakably the same in its base structure. He leaned back against the wall of the cell and crossed his arms over his chest. His boots were crossed at the ankle. Flynn was perched at what seemed to be a painfully awkward angle, hands before him, fingers yet again sliding over the pale beads. “What do you say?” Clu asked. He’d asked the same question so many times over the cycles, his own internal counter had actually hit a limit he was previously unaware existed, and reset itself. He calculated it was on its fourth reset, and several hundred ticks into the new count. There was no point looking for the exact figure; Flynn wouldn’t answer, just as he hadn’t answered any other time.  
  
It had taken him a few cycles, but Clu eventually figured out that the words Flynn repeated over and over in his slow mumble were not his own language. _Why_ he repeated them was another matter entirely. As well as what they meant to the user.  
  
“What are you telling yourself, Flynn? Are you…” Clu searched for the word. “Praying?” That possibility made him chuckle a bit. “Asking for some power greater than yourself to come here and save you?” He summoned a memory of Flynn as a child, climbing into bed with his toys and books scattered around him, some still clutched in his tiny hands. It felt like his own, but it was just another flash; only the image remained, there were no sensory details to indicate that Clu had ever experienced that moment himself. In the memory he saw hands pressed together, saying little prayers. It was similar, but there were no beads. No damn beads.  
  
“ _What are they for?_ ” Clu demanded. He pushed himself from the wall and stormed over to Flynn, standing above him, looming, like a threatening specter. He knew abuse would only push Flynn further into himself, into his meditation. It had never, ever achieved results. So he postured and intimidated to the best of his ability.  
  
Flynn paused. It was a simple motion—or rather, a lack of motion—but to Clu, after so many hundreds of cycles, it was momentous. He waited, nearly trembling, straining to capture the next pivotal act he was sure would follow.  
  
Then fingers went back to sliding over the smoothed oblong beads, hushed words tumbled forth once more, and it was as if nothing had changed in that moment. A wall opened up and just like that slammed back into place. Clu felt like he was the prisoner, rather than the battered man kneeling at his feet. In a flash of rage he pulled his leg back and kicked Flynn square in the chest, sending him tumbling backwards. His own foot remained motionless in the air, and he stared, shocked at himself for the first time. He hadn’t meant to do it, and as he looked over Flynn’s crumpled figure, he wasn’t sure it hadn’t been a step too far to be corrected.  
  
“Flynn? I—I’m—”  
  
There was a sound that made Clu think of Rinzler; a low, labored rumble that spoke unmistakably of damage. Then Flynn was rising to his knees, pushing himself up from the glossy black floor. He coughed and wheezed, and the rumble dissipated. Clu watched incredulously as the user crawled back to his spot in the center of the cell, rearranged his legs, and went back to meditating.  
  
“You can’t be serious. What do I have to do, Flynn? What will it take to make you _answer me?_ ” He’d given up on the foolish notion that he could force his creator to build for him, to rez new programs for him, or really do _anything_ for him. Without his disc Flynn was next to useless, and Clu had long ago taken that away from him. Why he continued to visit the pathetic shell of the man he had once been was beyond his capacity to understand, but he did it anyway. “I’ll let you go,” he found himself saying. A desperate lie that he knew to be meaningless, because Flynn could see right through him—he had always been able to. “I’ll let you walk out of here, just tell me what they do, what it is you’re saying. Tell me what it means to you.”  
  
“No.”  
  
The word was so soft, so silent, Clu wasn’t sure he’d actually heard it. The same spark of anger lit his circuits and he dropped to one knee, face just shy of touching the grayed mirror of his own. “Then you’ll stay here, in this room, forever. Eternity, Flynn. The infinite progression of numbers, cycles beyond measure. It’s a long, _long_ time. Just me and you, and the world you can’t ever touch—both of them, actually.”  
  
Flynn’s eyes had been downcast, lidded heavily to the point that they were nearly closed, but he raised them at Clu’s words. The empty stare he had adopted after the first hundred cycles met Clu’s icy gaze.  
  
“Unless you tell me, this will _never_ end,” Clu said.  
  
One corner of Flynn’s mouth twitched just enough to indicate his amusement. Clu narrowed his eyes and waited.  
  
“ _Omni finit_ ,” Flynn whispered.  
  
“What?” He recognized the words Flynn had repeated for so many cycles, but their meaning, their context in that tense moment eluded him.  
  
Flynn lifted his head and straightened his shoulders, and for an instant Clu was reminded of the man he’d once been; the user who had presided over their system, brimming with power and capable of anything. He smiled at Clu—a cold, knowing smile. “ _Everything ends_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know the mala beads are a Hindu/Buddhist artifact, however, I think Flynn is enough of a Renaissance man to know some Latin, too. As for the accuracy of the Latin itself, I can’t claim that I’m sure it works, however, I did check with someone who knows a good amount of it, so hopefully it’s fine.


End file.
